And that hand of the saint
was only part of the appalling deception of his beautiful and tragically
lying body, a crystal temple in which a demon dwelt secretly, peering
from its concealment through the shadowy blue windows, in which Julian
saw truth and honour, but in which Cuckoo read things to terrify and to
dismay.
For she was not wholly unaware of the mystery of Valentine, of the sharp
contrast between his appearance and the vision of his nature as it came
to her. She understood that there was something in the fine beauty of
his face and figure to account for Julian's blindness and refusal to be
warned against him. Cuckoo's intuition, the intuition of an unlearned and
instinctive creature trained by the hardest circumstances to rely on what
she called her wits, laid the crystal temple in ruins, and drove the
demon from its lurking-place naked and shrieking into the open. But,
after all, was not she rather deceived than Julian? Julian, from the
first moment of meeting Valentine, looked upon him as saint. Cuckoo,
from the first moment of meeting, looked upon him as devil. Each put
him aside from the general run of humanity, the one in a heaven of the
imagination, the other in a hell. Neither would allow him to be midway
between the two, containing possibilities of both,--ordinary, natural
man.
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